Modern glass façades are often not only a functional element of a building, but are increasingly also being used for solar power generation. Tailor-made solar modules allow closely fit integration into building grids and profiles. Semitransparent solar cells, however, also opaque solar cells with transparent areas, make it possible for photovoltaic glasswork to appear to be infused with sunlight. The solar cells are also increasingly taking over the desired effect of protection against sunlight and glare. The production of such photovoltaic systems requires working conditions of the type that are common in the manufacture of semiconductors and integrated electronic circuits. These so-called clean-room conditions for the manufacture of photovoltaic systems also require the handling of large-area, impact-sensitive glass plates.
Apart from that, large thin glass plates of the type that are used for making large TFT video screens are extremely sensitive to even the smallest impacts due to their structure and simultaneous relatively large mass. An industrial robot is therefore not suitable for manipulating large, thin glass plates in ultraclean rooms owing to a lack of sensitivity and insufficient positioning precision for such cases. The transfer of large impact-sensitive glass plates from the horizontal orientation to a vertical orientation requires particular attentiveness under ultraclean room conditions. Another aspect in the maintenance of ultraclean room conditions, particularly in the production of cost-intensive products, is the danger of contamination by people. An unintended sneeze can destroy an entire production unit. Such a plant likewise requires an increased reliability. Since the costs for the acquisition and operation of a correspondingly equipped industrial robot are high, an economical price for such a handling system is also important.
Precisely in the handling of large-area glass plates by an industrial robot, it is observed that such large surface areas tend to oscillate due to movement. This can be caused firstly by the suction elements adhering to only a few places, and secondly by the accelerated movement sequences of such robots. With these oscillation phenomena, there is an additional risk of glass breakage.
In the device for transferring and stacking plates described in DE 19 18 791 A, the stacking speed of plates is to be considerably increased relative to a stacking operation according to prior art, which is partially manually assisted. This is accomplished largely by performing the lifting or turning of each plate in two steps. In order to be able to handle the respective plate in the method described there, it is fixedly connected by means of a suction unit (4), supplied to various rotatable carrying units and brought into various horizontal and inclined positions until it is finally transferred to a stacking section (11). There are no suggestions for protective and gentle transportation of large-format, thin, shock-sensitive glass plates under ultraclean room conditions.
DE 10 2005 039 453 A1 additionally discloses a modularly constructed processing system for large-area substrates. For protection against contamination, such large-area substrates, for example, TFT video screens, are dependent on enclosures for manipulation under special atmospheric conditions. According to the invention presented in that source, an enclosure of the processing system is forgone, but the modularly-constructed processing facility is furnished with a transfer facility that allows both fast access to the individual modules and a fast conversion between the individual modules, and by means of which a transfer of substrates between the modules is enabled even under clean room conditions. This is achieved by virtue of the fact that the transfer unit has a transfer chamber constructed as an enclosure that houses the substrate support, so that the size of the enclosure can be reduced to the size of the substrate and thus to the absolutely necessary size. This does involve measures for optimizing a processing system under ultraclean room conditions in a certain sense, but the topic of transporting large-format, thin, shock-sensitive glass plates is not dealt with.
In various embodiments of the invention all movable elements comprise an abrasion-protected material and all drive units are emission-protected with respect to abrasion of moving parts.
Embodiments of the invention comprise a computer program with a program code for performing the process steps as described herein when the program is executed in a computer.
Embodiments of the invention include a machine readable medium with a program code for performing the process as described herein when the program is executed in a computer.